Chami Cool and the hostel vibe...

        This morning I still had 5 guests what isn´t many and wasn´t very satisfying but during the day 2 new people came separately, from Pakistan and Mexico. 7 is already a better number. It´s about half of the hostel capacity. it´s not too bad.
         Hopefully some new people will come tomorrow. But this ones are coming through Hospitality Club so they wouldn´t even be supposed to pay. I offer them the first night, it's the least i can do, and then I just have to hope they would stay as long as possible although they told me "they want to meet new people".
        I never thought about taking advantage of Hospitality club or couchsurfing for my little business and I even was mad at people doing it but now strangely I´m much more opened to it. I think that at the end, in a city like Barcelona it´s good for everybody:
       For the other CS members that don't have to feel bad to have once again let some guests sleep outside, even if they don't care anyway, for the guests as their only other option would have been to sleep in a more expensive, ex-centred and lame place and obviously for the host, for me. And one free night is quite something already.

      Later on today Chami came over to the house after Laurent had probably told him about my uprising little business. He is a cool fellow. French, chubby, smiling and joyful and Morocco blooded. He´s been living here for about 7 years playing reggae in a couple of bands and surviving not only with music but with some little extra jobs too.
     He really wanted to know how the hostel was doing and it was a real satisfaction to see him, which has been in the business for years, just amazed by the shape it was finally taking!
     He congratulated me and offered me some kind of partnership. Actually the same kind I have been working on lately: He finds me people and gets a commission on them. Since he has contacts for some years now it's definitely something he can provide...
     He actually has said to a group of 6 that they could stay at his but he then proposed me to host them myself instead as he doesn't really have the capacities right now.
     His commission is 2E per person per night. He´s a businessman. Not the best one on the top of the scale but at it's level he is.
     Normally my rate would be 5E or 8E per pers. if the guest stays longer than 2 nights and that´s it... Later he also helped him and me out by buying a single bed for 25E. It was there beneath one of my bunk bed and I had to put it to sell and get rid of it anyway...
     It was good for him too as I helped him to take it to his place. He carried the bed and I the matress and we arrived at his place in Robadors street in the Raval also know as the prostitutes street. we started evaluating the possibilities of turning his own place into a guesthouse too.
     I thought he was already into it but when i saw his place I knew he actually wasn't. It was quite a mess. The only bunk bed he has is a super old one, blue, barely holding on.
     I thought I would get advices from him but he was the one telling me that I was in a different league and asking me advices himself about how many beds to put, of what kind, and how to organize them. I think that even though he's intelligent he is too much of an hedonist to have made it right a long time ago already.
    He lives day by day, in the present. I din't know you had to think to be able to create and organize a place as I´m starting to do. I never think that i think too much anyway. That most people aren't torturing themselves by thinking so much as I do most of the time. But i realize that sometimes it's useful. I hadn't seen Chami for a long time and it was pretty cool to spend some simple but quality time with him...

But it´s just the beginning...

This is it, after exactly 3 months of NOT writing the new blog I was suppose to start for my 30th birthday i´m back on the track and hopefully for more than a few days this time. What's the excuse if it's not to be 30 anymore, to make a big change in my life, to change something somehow somewhere for not being able to change somebody, my own self...
            What if it isn´t that?! Well this time i´m not going for something big in 3 languages at least not for now. I will just stick to English at the moment and see how it goes... So Once Again, What is it This Time?! Well you know it, don´t you?! At least you suspect it or suppose it since it´s already nicely wrapped up in the title itself:
            -"The Ka Hostel", the place I want people to chill out this summer. The little place in Barcelona that will make a dozen of people at the time happy to have found it, glad to be here, lucky to be in Barcelona also just because of that!!! A place that will also make me happy to be able to save up for my next couple of big trips and dreams. I´ve been renting "the Ka Hostel" since the 15th of december but at the time it only was a flat with 3 bedrooms that I turned into a 4 bedrooms.
            At 30 I've been obviously independent since a while ago, for about ten years now. My parents for the pretty good reason that I didn´t deserve it, haven´t helped me much with money and who could blame them. I might have been even worse now if had been helped this way. Being an assisted is just the worst thing anybody should hope for. But they have helped me to rent this place though by lending me some cash and I´m grateful for that. If it was not for them maybe I would just have had to give up on my tiny dream of having my own cosy place...
           But things change and winter gave place to spring that will in 3 weeks open another door to "summer". Barcelona is the 5th most touristic city in the world and my cosy flat is Right in the heart of it! For how long have I been dreaming of having an hostel?! 9 years, 9 loooong years. Now I´m a bit less enthusiastic about the magic I felt of it but I´m still on for it and if there is nothing to stop me I´m gonna do it right! "Ka hostel" was really born this last week and I wish to it a long life. I hope you also do. Let´s talk more about it later on...